A DORSET flower barn and blueberry farm offering Christmas wreath-making workshops is the Daily Echo’s Trader of the Week.
Dorset brothers Josh and Dan Benson own Brothers Farm in Wimborne, the oldest blueberry plantation farm in the UK.
After three years of single-handed farming Josh brought his brother Dan along to get involved, creating Brother’s Farm, an organic blueberry farm with dried flower workshops and a new café.
Now, the farm offers Christmas wreath workshops, dried flower bouquets and yoga sessions.
Dan said: “Over the last seven years we have been turning a 60-year-old nursery site into a new cut-flower & organic blueberry farm.
“This winter for the first time, our newly renovated Flower Barn Café that hosts lots of workshops, floristry demonstrations and all sorts, will be open and operational throughout the year as opposed to just a seasonal summer outfit.
“We’re aiming on creating a really sustainable income from growing flowers and blueberries on the land and creating a place of creativity and biodiversity too.
“Step by step we are still trying to make a living from growing organic fruit and improving the farm along the way by diversifying its income, productivity and biodiversity in a way that will enable the farm to live on after we have had our time too.
“This is the first time that we've been open through the year. I want to try and spread that message out to people because it takes a little while and it's quite difficult because we're stuck in the middle of nowhere.”
“I started to grow flowers because that's what I'm into and then we put together a little makeshift seasonal café to glue it together.
"This worked for the first couple of years and then each year we’ve grown a bit more and taken on more space on site and leased the barn and then the next year we start to renovate and then we built a terrace.
“So each year there's something else to develop because it's 60 years old and it's falling down, so unless we do something about it, it's going to fall down so it's quite interesting.”
The new Flower Barn Café in Stapehill Road, Wimborne, is now open throughout the year Wednesdays to Sundays from 10am to 4pm.
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